Who doesn’t need a bit of inspiration every now and then?
If you constantly spend time running over exaggerated, highly unlikely scenarios in your head, comparing yourself to others or blaming yourself for every little mistake you’ve made since you were 10, it’s good to be reminded that there is more to life once you get out of your own head. Once you finally give yourself permission to stop overthinking and start living.
So here are 56 inspirational and relatable quotes every overthinker can use in their life. I hope you find them as helpful and encouraging as I do!
I. ” We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.” – Carlos Castaneda
2. “Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
3. ” To sing a wrong note is insignificant, but to sing without passion is unforgivable.” – Ludwig Van Beethoven
4. “Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.”- Samuel Johnson
5. ” Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.” – Mahatma Gandhi
6. “I just give myself permission to suck…I find this hugely liberating.” – John Green
7. “Do not allow negative thoughts to enter your mind for they are the weeds that strangle confidence.” – Bruce Lee
8. “I am still determined to be cheerful and to be happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learnt, from experience, that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.” – Martha Washington
9. “Half of life is lost in charming others. The other half is lost in going through anxieties caused by others. Leave this play. You have played enough.” – Rumi
10. “When I let go of what I am, I become what I want to be.” – Lao Tzu
11. “You can’t insure against the future, except by really believing in the best bit of you, and in the power beyond it.” – D.H Lawrence
12. “I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.” – Louisa May Alcott
13. “Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.”- Napoleon Bonaparte
14. “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.” – William Shakespeare
15. “Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.” – Napoleon Hill
16. “I know who I am, I know what I can and can’t do. I know what I will and won’t do.” – Dolly Parton
17. “Most of us never stop to consider our blessings; rather, we spend the day only thinking about our problems. But since you have to be alive to have problems, be grateful for the opportunity to have them.” – Bernie Siegel
18. “Nothing is permanent in this wicked world. Not even our troubles.” – Charlie Chaplin
19. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” – Aristotle
20. “Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.” – Nora Ephron
21. “The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” – Confucius
22. “You don’t have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you.” – Dan Millman
23. “Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.” – Epictetus.
24. “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
25. “If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl, but by all means, keep moving.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
26. “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” – Theodore Roosevelt
27. “Your focus determines your reality.” – Qui-Gon Jinn
28. “As is our confidence, so is our capacity.” – William Hazlitt
29. “I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence, but it comes from within. It is there all the time.”- Anna Freud
30. “True beauty is knowing who you are and what you want and never apologizing for it.”- Pink
31. “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” – Bernard M. Baruch
32. “Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.” – William S. Burroughs
33. “Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” – Steve Jobs
34. “Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves.” – Marie Curie
35. “Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.” – Plato
36. “It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” – Edmund Hillary
37. “The way you tell your story to yourself matters.” – Amy Cuddy
38. “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”- Martin Luther King Jr
39. “He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.”- Michel de Montaigne
40. “Rule number one: Don’t sweat the small stuff. Rule number two: It’s all small stuff.” – Robert S. Eliot
41. “If you hear a voice within you say ‘You are not a painter,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” – Vincent Van Gogh
42. “A great many worries can be diminished by realizing the unimportance of the matter which is causing anxiety.” – Bertrand Russell
43. “How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.” – Thomas Jefferson
44. “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” – Maya Angelou
45. “Thinking will not overcome fear but action will.” – W. Clement Stone
46. “As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
47. “When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.” – African Proverb
48. “Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future.” – Deepak Chopra
49. “When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.” – Winston Churchill
50. “Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.” – William Shakespeare
51. “You cannot always control what goes on outside, but you can always control what goes on inside.” – Wayne Dyer
52. “Embrace the glorious mess that you are.” – Elizabeth Gilbert
53. “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. ” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
54. “Stop thinking and end your problems.” – Lao Tzu
55. “There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.” – Epictetus
56. “No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.” – Virginia Woolf
